A spat between the White House and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos over President Joe Biden's fiscal policies intensified Monday, with Bezos accusing Biden of ignoring inflation while the White House claimed the billionaire is looking out for his own interests.
Jeff Bezos received an award from the International Astronautical Federation.
Bezos criticized Biden for suggesting corporate tax rate increases could help ease a severe spike in inflation, a stance the billionaire called "misdirection" and a "non-sequitur."
Biden tried hard to inject even moreStimulus into an already over-heated, inflationary economy, but his administration failed to pass the multi-trillion-dollarBuild Back Better social spending bill last year, according to Bezos.
The White House said in a statement to several news outlets that Bezos was self-serving in his criticism of a spending package that would have boosted taxes for high-earners and corporations.
Bezos accused the Biden Administration of trying to distract from inflation and obscure how Build Back Better would have worsened it.
It doesn't require a huge leap to figure out why one of the wealthiest individuals on Earth doesn't want an economic agenda for the middle class that cuts some of the biggest costs families face, fights inflation for the long haul, and adds to the historic deficit reduction.
They want to muddy the topic. Inflation hurts the neediest the most. Unions aren't causing inflation and wealthy people aren't.
Clinton-era Treasury Secretary Larry Summers defended Biden for tying inflation to taxes on Monday, calling Bezos' position mostly wrong. In a PBS NewsHour interview last year, Summers argued that the Build Back Better package was not likely to cause inflation to go up.
Forbes estimates that Bezos has a net worth of $137 billion. Biden and Bezos have both donated to both Democrats and Republicans in recent years. Bezos hailed Biden's 2020 defeat of Trump, who was openly contemptuous of the Amazon chair, and Bezos said last year he supports both increasing infrastructure spending and hiking corporate taxes. The Federal Trade Commission chair has pushed for antitrust investigations against Amazon, and Biden appeared to endorse the campaign to unionize Amazon warehouses last month.
In recent weeks, Bezos has become slightly more outspoken on the social network. Last month, he suggested a push to acquire Twitter by Musk, a fellow billionaire spaceentrepreneur, could be complicated by Musk's business dealings in China.
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